


close my eyes, I can't embrace you

by liarlagoon



Series: ParaCorin [1]
Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Angst, Child Abuse, Force-Sensitive Corin, Gen, Ghosts, Grief/Mourning, Growing Up, Like seriously grief is a major theme of this work, Minor Character Death, be prepared for it, the child abuse and character death are both non-graphic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-01
Updated: 2020-04-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:40:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23423335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liarlagoon/pseuds/liarlagoon
Summary: The dead come in two distinct flavors. Corin has always been able to see one of them - shades. Spirits that are mostly gone, only an imprint of the person they once were remaining. He's six when he learns of the second type of dead: a spectral. The first one he ever sees is his mother.
Relationships: Corin the Stormtooper & Original Non-Binary Character, Corin the Stormtrooper & Original Female Character, Corin the Stormtrooper/Original Male Character
Series: ParaCorin [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1684951
Comments: 19
Kudos: 54





	close my eyes, I can't embrace you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LadyIrina](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyIrina/gifts).



> Title from "Hallucinations" by PVRIS, the song I was listening to for the Vibe for this
> 
> Big thanks to [dd_123](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dd_123/pseuds/dd_123) for making sure this was readable before I posted it, and for everyone in the mandorin discord for helping me keep the energy to work on it! And, of course, to the wonderful [LadyIrina](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyIrina/pseuds/LadyIrina) for creating and sharing Corin the stormtrooper; he's a delight to write. 
> 
> Also, I read that Twi'leks speak in essentially a French accent, so that is how Oilak's dialogue is meant to be read. :)

The dead come in two distinct flavors. Corin has always been able to see one of them - shades, he decides to call them, after he learns the word. Spirits that are mostly gone, only an imprint of the person they once were remaining. They drift and pass through people and buildings alike, with no real sense of direction, and they're mostly transparent, like shadows. Sometimes, they remain near where they died, like a warning sign. That is how he knows, before his mother tells him and before he learns first hand, that his father is a bad man.

When he's four years old, he goes with his father to work one day. There are so many shades around the towering building that they obscure his vision, and he clings tightly to his father's pant leg to avoid getting lost in them. They spend the day in near constant motion, and his father talks to so many people that it makes his little head spin, but not long before they leave, his father goes into a room and tells Corin to stay outside. He stands a few feet away from the door, and shortly before his father comes out again, he hears a strange mechanical noise that could be any of a thousand mundane things, but he knows that it's blaster fire, because three newly formed shades, distinct because they are nearly opaque, follow his father out. Corin doesn't cling to his pant leg on the way out of the building. 

Later, when he's older, he thinks that normal people, people without his sight, can feel them too when they are in numbers that great, because people avoid the building as if it is a graveyard, which, in a sense, it is. His father either doesn't notice or doesn't care. 

He's six when he learns of the second type of dead: a spectral. The first one he ever sees is his mother. She'd kissed his forehead as she left only an hour before and told him she was going to get groceries and art supplies for a craft Corin had requested and would be back by nightfall. When she drifts into the room, he doesn't notice right away that she's not quite solid. 

"Mommy!" he shouts, a huge grin splitting his face. "You're back early!" 

She smiles sadly at him, and he frowns and goes to hug her, because his hugs always make her smile, a _real_ smile. He falls on his face when his arms pass right through, and even though he's never seen a spectral before, he knows. 

"Mommy," he says, voice trembling but steady, too steady and too old for his tiny body, "what happened?" 

"I can't protect you anymore," she says, instead of answering directly. "Corin, my darling, you must listen closely to your father now that my body is gone. You cannot trust him, but you must listen, to keep yourself safe."

Corin cries for his mother that night, after his father goes to sleep, but only for her physical loss, because she stays with him always, even more than when she was alive. She stays for four years, sings to him when tears sting in his eyes at the pain his father inflicts on his body and tells him stories to lull him to sleep when his stomach aches with hunger after he performs poorly during training, whispers love and reassurances in his ear when his father's insults and degradations burrow too deeply into his mind. 

When he's ten, he sees her flicker. 

"Mom?" he asks, interrupting her humming from the side of his bed. "Are you okay?" 

She sighs, purses her lips and clasps and unclasps her hands in her lap, but she's not in the habit of lying to him anymore, like she was in life, so she says, "I'm… tired, baby." 

Corin sits up straight. "You're tired? What does that mean?" 

She's silent for a long time, and then she holds her hand over his, careful not to pass through, and says, "We are meant to leave this world when our bodies die. I wasn't supposed to stay, but I did, because I was not ready to leave you, my darling. That choice is taking its toll." 

Understanding settles over Corin slowly, like a blanket of snow, heavy and cold, but also pure and clear and right. "You have to go," he says softly. 

His mother nods. She leans in and presses her lips against his forehead, and Corin imagines as he takes a deep, shuddering breath that he can feel her warmth. 

"I love you, baby. You're gonna be okay," she whispers, and then she's gone.

When he feels the last of her lingering presence fade away, he takes in his first breath in a new world, a world in which he is utterly alone. Tears streak down his face and ugly, violent sobs wrack his chest, muffled into his pillow. Grief spreads out from his chest like a crawling fire, burning through his veins and leaving something different and more broken behind. Eventually, it runs its course and leaves him weary enough to sleep without his mother's comfort. When he wakes, he is numb, and he thinks maybe that's for the best. 

He exists in this numbness for two months, but as much as he might wish it had, it could never have remained forever. His father, as negligent and uncaring of Corin as he is, still notices when he loses weight, and so he watches closer, sees Corin pick slowly at his food at breakfast, sees him go to bed without finishing his dinner on the nights that it is given to him, and decides to teach him to be grateful for what he is given. He snatches the plate Corin is picking at and tells him if he doesn't want his food then he won't have it. Corin lasts three days before he passes out during a training run. When he wakes, there is a bandage on his face and a small plate of bland food in front of him, and he shovels it in his mouth as fast as he can, and he does the same with every plate he receives in his father's house after that, always waiting for it to be snatched away. 

\--

When he's twelve, he makes his first friend. They're not a living friend, of course; his father would never allow that. He hears yelling before he sees them, but the dead have a different quality to their voices and he is finely attuned to it. The yelling is in a language he doesn't understand, but they look close enough to human that he can see the rage painted across their features, and he knows his father, so he knows what happened. He greets his father politely, and then has to bite his tongue and hold his face straight when the spectral suddenly switches to Basic and shouts, "I hope you die alone and in agony, you schutta bastard!" 

His father steps through a door and the spectral goes to follow, but Corin risks waving behind his father's back to catch their attention. Their eyes snap to him, and surprise briefly overwhelms the rage. "You see me?" 

Corin gives a very slight nod and starts walking towards his room, giving a minute gesture to follow. The spectral spits a few insults at him, and then subsides when he doesn't react. He turns to face them when the door finally closes behind him. 

"Your father did this to me!" they snarl as soon as he makes eye contact. "He killed me!" 

"I know." 

"I did nothing! He came to my home and took me and then my parents! I saw them fall and-- and the shadows come out of them!" 

"I know." 

"There was nothing in his eyes, no soul! He is evil!" 

"I know." 

The spectral falters. "He is your father. You do not argue?" 

Corin slumps onto his bed, suddenly exhausted. "No. I know." 

Their face falls. "You know." 

Corin nods, and the spectral comes to float next to him, just above the bedsheets. 

"I'm sorry that he did that to you," Corin says, closing his eyes. "What's your name?" 

"Oilak. And you?" 

"Corin." 

"I am sorry you live with a schutta bastard, Corin. You do not apologize for him; he is the one who owes apology." 

Corin opens his eyes as he rolls to face Oilak, lips twitching up. "Okay. What's a schutta?" 

Oilak pulls at one of the long appendages on their head and says, "Ah… it is an animal from my planet, like a rat." 

Corin snorts. "Fair. And what are you? I've never seen a purple person before." 

"My people are called Twi'lek. And you? You are human?" 

Corin hums. "I don't know. My mom was human, but if my dad is a rat, does that make me half-rat?" 

Oilak lets out a surprised snort, and then a real laugh. "No, I do not think rat is inherited. It is something you turn into." 

"Oh, good. Maybe I'll turn into a bird instead, so I can fly away from here." 

They aren't friends immediately, but it doesn't take long for them to get there. They have no one to talk to but each other, and so Oilak makes faces and yells encouragement when Corin trains and tells him stories of their planet in the evenings, and Corin tells stories of his mother and answers any questions Oilak asks about ghosts as best he can. He knows that one day, like his mother, Oilak will have to leave, but six months after they first meet, when Corin is laying in his bed with one arm cradled against his chest in a sling and Oilak is floating across the room doing an exaggerated impression of his uncle choking to death on one of his heavy, expensive rings, he decides that he loves them anyway. 

\--- 

When he's fifteen, his dad tells him to pack his things. He doesn't have much of his own; he has his clothes, of course, two paperback novels he'd slipped past his father's watchful eye, and a few photographs, mostly of him and his mother. Everything else belongs to his father. He packs it all into a single suitcase, says goodbye to Oilak, who he knows cannot follow him because they are bound to his father, and boards a ship that takes him to the Imperial Academy. It's a relief, if he's being honest. The instructors there are by no means kind, but the training is infinitely easier than what his father subjected him to. He learns star charts and navigation, fighting and shooting. He struggles in his language classes, but he makes new friends that way, a boy and a girl named Lowen and Imiza, who approach him one day while he's glaring at a challenging assignment translating Huttese. 

"Hey," Lowen greets, "want some help with that?" 

"What do you want for it?" Corin asks, because he knows by now that nothing is given without a price. 

"We're having trouble keeping up with the hand-to-hand lessons," Imiza says, "and you're blowing through them like they're nothing. Lessons for lessons. Sound like a fair trade?" 

Corin looks down at his assignment, thinks about having someone to talk to again, and says, "Yeah, that sounds good."

When he's sixteen, he sees Oilak again for the last time. They appear in his dormitory late one evening, a wild grin on their face, and tell him that they've been practicing moving things since he left, and they've just pushed a heavy bookcase over on top of his father and killed him. 

"He's gone?" Corin asks, breathless with relief. 

"Squashed like a bug," they say, still grinning. Then their smile fades, and they continue, "But my tether is gone now too, so I have to leave." 

"I know," Corin says, still smiling softly. "It was an honor to know you, Oilak. I'm glad you've found your peace." 

Oilak smiles at him again. "You are a good person, Corin Valentis. I am glad to have met you." 

Corin holds his smile until he feels Oilak's presence fade completely, and only then does he let the grief in his chest crawl up his throat. He cries that night for the first time in a long time, mourning the loss of his first friend, his father, and the life he knows is gone forever. 

\--

When he's seventeen, after his heart has had some time to heal, he lets Lowen pin him while they spar and then leans up to kiss him. It's soft and innocent and it makes both of them flush bright red and grin stupidly at each other, and Imiza whoops and says, "Finally!" They have to keep it secret, because fraternization is discouraged, but they hold hands in out of the way places and occasionally curl together in bed in the dormitories, and it fills Corin with a quiet joy that makes him feel lighter than he ever remembers feeling. 

When he's eighteen, he stands in stormtrooper armor with his friends, assigned to the same outpost by an amazing stroke of luck, and laughs at Imiza's impression of one of their academy instructors until they get a call to go out and investigate a disturbance. They travel in a team of six, three older, more experienced troopers and the three new graduates. They draw close to the reported site, and there's a bright flash that makes Corin swerve hard and crash his speeder bike, and everything goes black. When he wakes up, he almost wishes he hadn't. There's a crater in the ground ahead of him, and a few pieces of stormtrooper armor flung in a circle around it. There are bodies, but none of them whole anymore, and when he swallows the bile in his throat and goes to look at them, he can't honestly claim to know who was who. There are no remnants of any of them, neither spectral nor shade, and he's glad to be alone when he yanks his helmet off, retches on the ground, and then dissolves into sobs. 

When the sobs finally die down and he can breathe again, he pulls the pouches he keeps his photographs and credits in off his tool belt, piles all of his armor in the crater on top of an explosive charge, backs up a safe distance, and detonates it with a blaster shot. His armor goes flying just like the rest of his squad's, and he walks away in nothing but his boots and blacksuit, pictures clutched tight in one hand and blaster in the other. 

\--

He finds new clothes in town and picks up the first job he finds that gets him off-planet, moving cargo on a trade ship. He introduces himself as "Low" for a while, unsure whether using his real name is safe so soon after running away, and hops across the galaxy, very pointedly _not_ making a name for himself. After two years, when he's twenty and a little more sure of himself, he gets into low grade security work. It pays better, and the first time he has to chase someone down, he feels his blood rush in his veins, his heart beating a tattoo in his chest, and a sense of _right_ settles in him, bone deep. He stays there for another four years, but the job is calm more often than it isn't, so at twenty-four, when he's saved up enough money to buy himself some decent armor and weaponry and a second-hand ship that has seen better days but will take him where he needs to go, he picks up his first bounty puck. 

He sticks to mostly easy catches at first, bail jumpers and thieves and the occasional spice runner, but after a few pucks on supposedly low-level bounties end up being much dicier than advertised, he decides that if he’s going to risk his life, he might as well get paid decently for it. He starts picking up larger bounties. Eventually, he gains a reputation; it’s impossible not to, with how small bounty hunting circles at the level he’s operating at tend to be. “Low” is someone you go to when you need something tricky done with less information than most contractors will accept. His success rate is as impressive as it is odd; the more dangerous and difficult the bounty, the more likely he is to catch them, it seems. Whispers start to circulate about a secret information network providing him all of the information he shouldn’t have. When he’s asked how he gets his intel, he just gives a lopsided grin and says, “The dead talk.”

It’s this reputation that gets a tracking fob without a puck tossed his way when he’s twenty-eight. The target is fifty years old with no picture and no other identifying information, which means they must have left a trail of bodies a parsec long. It looks like an easy, simple job, and it pays unbelievably well, so Corin takes it. 

Two weeks later, when he finds himself standing over an unconscious Mandalorian, surrounded by dead bodies and staring down an apparently fifty-year-old baby, he wonders how he ever thought he could be so lucky.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Ideally this will be a series, so I look forward to seeing you all again at the next part!


End file.
